Sunday, May 9, 2010

The cake that almost wasn't

May 8, 2010- Mindy wanted me to blog this, so here it goes. A few months ago Mindy mentioned something about me making a television cake like gramma (my mother) used to make. My mother doesn't remember how to do it. Let's face it...it has probably been 25 years since she made one. I can't remember what I did yesterday let alone 25 years ago. At any rate, I was going to make one for her birthday and then said to myself, "self, you really don't want to do this - it's too much work". Now we are upon Mother's Day. Okay, I am going to do this; I know I can. Boy was I wrong.

First of all, never ever grease a pan with real butter. For some reason it either burns or sticks (unless you are making an upside down pineapple cake, then the flavor is wonderful). So, I greased it with butter and then floured it (two 9 inch pans). Mind you, the pans are old. My mother had somehow inscribed the date on the bottom which is somewhere around 1948 or 1949. So that makes them about (I am figuring this out with a calculator. Duh, I was born in 1947. Should be pretty easy to figure out) 62 years old give or take. So was it the butter or the pans. Everyone knows when you bake a cake if you want to invert it on to another dish you should do it while it is still warm. What was I thinking! I was so busy on facebook I didn't even think about it. I had put a knife around the outside thinking that was good enough. Wrong!

When I went to take them out of the pan, uh, nothing would come out. I tapped and beat the bottom of the pan. Nothing. Was that butter or glue I used. So I kept going around the outside with a knife and along the bottom, tipped it over again and something started to come out and then it did. Holy crap! Where was the bottom of the cake! I looked in the pan and the bottom was still there, sort of in pieces. Well that wasn't going to stop me. I took a spatula and scraped it up like I was taking fried eggs out of the pan, plopped on the cake and then took the cake and turned it upside down, quickly mind you, on another pan. Now, for the other pan. Same thing. Now I am irritated. I have a crumbly cake with pieces to put together like a puzzle. Who's gonna care anyway. It all goes in the same place anyway, right? I put tinfoil over it (another idiotic mistake), to keep it from getting hard over night.

This morning when I took the tinfoil off and touched the cake, it was kind of not dry, sort of sticky. Great! So, I turned on the oven and was going to chuck this cake and start over. Hello? Do you remember you don't have another white cake mix or even yellow? What the heck! A television cake you really shouldn't frost until you are ready to eat it. I couldn't wait til then. I got the beaters out and started boiling the water. The frosting you do over a pan of boiling water. Not your average frosting out of a can. You actually beat it for like five minutes or more. It has to form peaks. So, I decided to frost the bottom layer. With this kind of frosting you can actually cover up your mistakes. Now to put the top layer on. Oh darn, I turned the layer over so that the bottom (all the crumbly part) would be on top of the bottom layer so when I frosted it, I would have a smooth top. Well, when I put the layer on I needed to move it over a little. The top of the top layer moved, but the bottom stayed where it was (what else is new). So, I said the heck with it. Started putting the frosting on, (even though the bottom of the top layer is a little to the left and the very top isn't on top of the whole bottom of the top (you might have to re-read that if you didn't get it). I should have put more frosting in the middle, but never having done this before I didn't know if I would have enough. I had plenty, so ended up just putting more around the outside and on top. The picture is below and you would never know there were any problems. Now the fun part will be when Mindy cuts into it. I can't wait to see all the pieces go all over.

2 comments:

  1. Cake is DELICIOUS!!!!!!
    Thanks! Your post was hilarious!

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  2. Ha ha!! All for Mindy! What a great mom!

    ReplyDelete